We're looking at doing an internal equipment refresh right now and, since everyone uses a laptop at our office and more than half use Linux, that means looking at laptops that can run Linux well. It is kind of surprising how limited that selection can be, particularly considering how many manufacturers have started waving the Linux flag around a bit and opening their hearts to Linux.

The last time out, we got a bunch of Lenovo 3000 machines, which were not Linux-certified — and we felt it. Numerous sound card problems, numerous video card quirks, buggy this, weird that — by the time we had finished moving most of the Lenovo 3000 machines back to Windows XP, we swore never to do uncertified hardware again. As a side note, we got several Lenovo Thinkpad Z61s at the same time, which worked pretty well although did show a few oddities and annoyances along the way. I believe that particular version of the Thinkpad was NOT certified, but Thinkpads overall have fairly good Linux support and conversely the Linux community has plenty of Thinkpad specific tools that help ease your way with those machines.

My laptop right now is an HP/Compaq nw9440, which is not necessarily certified, but did have good reviews from some people who used it with Linux. It has had a few quirks over time, but overall, it's been a really solid choice. Some of the function keys don't work as expected, particularly the screen brightness keys, but otherwise it does really well. My calculator button even brings up gcalc now, under OpenSuse 11, which never worked before.

So, we're looking at a bunch of HP laptops right now, and finding that maybe 1 in 5 is certified to work with Linux. The interesting thing I'm finding is that OLDER models are certified, but the newer stuff isn't. Are the manufacturers backing off this quickly from a new market? I realize Linux adoption on the enterprise desktop/laptop is slow at this point; maybe the cost of maintaining certification and testing for Linux just doesn't seem worthwhile for some manufacturers at this point. Unfortunately, lack of certification can be seen as a vicious cycle to keep the adoption of Linux down.

Some third-party shops offer their own certified builds of Linux on specific laptops. Emperor Linux leaps to mind as one of the more common shops specializing in Linux laptops. This gives you the options of choosing from several models of laptops (cross-manufacturer) and knowing absolutely that things will WORK when you get your machine. Even nicer, they'll put one of several versions of Linux on the machine, which gives you a wider range of distributions from which to choose. When you're buying several machines at once, the pricing may not work out as sweetly as the straight-up machines from the manufacturer, particularly for resellers, but it is an interesting option for one-offs or small orders where you really just want it to be stress free.

Anyway, we'll continue looking for our "perfect" laptop to see what we can put together. Hopefully we'll be able to find something that will work well, won't break the bank, and doesn't take us off into uncharted territory too badly.